Proposed agenda

[Steven <Handerson@CMU-CS-C.ARPA>]

I agree that there needs to be some taxonomic error handling system.  Catching
all errors just means catching all conditions that are more specific conditions
than the ERROR condition.  However, I disagree with your statement that there
is something fundamentally different about error conditions besides their
handlers.  I think Mary Fontana agrees with me here.  Is there anyone else out
there?  Hello?

I also disagree with the idea that we have to interface to ERROR, CERROR, etc.
The whole point of signal is that the handler gets to decide whether to halt
execution, invoke the debugger, etc.  Indeed, a handler might use ERROR or
CERROR as a result of it's operation.  If you KNOW at the point of error that
you can't proceed, you use ERROR to tell the user why.  The only reason ERROR
would want to signal a condition is if the act of signalling computed some
other information, which sounds more like a case for modular programming than
error handling.  If all else fails, you can always write a function FOOME-ERROR
that performs the relevant computation and calls ERROR.

I am entirely grossed out by the thought of using conditions as inter-module
interfaces.  Obviously, it is PART of the interface, in the same way that
function names, function arguments, and specials are, but none makes up an
entire interface.

CONDITION-BIND and -CASE sound ok, I suppose.  IGNORE-ERRORS and maybe even
CATCH-ERROR-RESTART sound like they should be implemented in terms of something
else.  "Proceed types" and argument protocol are going to be the biggies.

-- Steve